3Generating and Manipulating Annotations with the Annotator GUI

interMedia Annotator is packaged along with several sample multimedia files. They are included in the <ORACLE_HOME>\ord\Annotator\media_data directory. You can use interMedia Annotator on these files (or on files of your own choosing) to perform a number of operations. These operations include:

Creating an annotation

Editing attributes

Adding and deleting attributes to the annotation

Adding and deleting an annotation

Extracting samples

Saving an annotation

Opening an annotation

Playing media sources or samples

3.1 Creating an Annotation

To create an annotation, perform the following operations:

Either select New from the File menu or click the New Annotation button.

Figure 3-2 Open Window

To create an empty annotation, click the Files of Type pull-down menu and select an annotation type from the pull-down menu. (This option will be used most often in conjunction with a user-defined annotation type. See Chapter 10 for more information on creating your own annotation types.)

Click OK.

See Figure 1-1 for more information on how interMedia Annotator builds an annotation.

Table 3-1 Available URL Protocols

Access all the files on local or remotely mounted disks in your computer.

http

Access media available through an Internet Web server.

cd

Access audio compact discs in your local CDROM drive.

Note:

The URL used to extract annotations from a compact disc is not a standard URL. The URL is defined as follows:

Windows NT: cd:<your Windows CD-ROM drive>#cdda

Macintosh: cd:#cdda

If you are parsing a local file or a file available over the Internet through the http protocol, interMedia Annotator extracts the time-independent attributes from the media file and inserts them into a logical annotation.

If you are parsing an audio CD, interMedia Annotator can connect to a CDDB, find the entry corresponding to your CD, and create a logical annotation.

If you are parsing a media source with multiple tracks, such as a video source or audio CD, an annotation is created for each track.

When the parsing is complete, the annotation type appears in the Annotation Tree View of the Annotations pane. The attribute names and values for the currently selected annotation are displayed in the Attributes tab of the interMedia Annotator window (Figure 2-1). The Annotations pane contains an expandable list, which shows the hierarchy of annotations and sub-annotations (Figure 3-3).

Figure 3-3 Annotations Pane with Expanded List

In order to display the attributes of another annotation, select it in the Annotation Tree View.

Some JPEG files contain additional metadata in the Information Interchange Model (IIM) format. This metadata can optionally be extracted into an IpctIimAnn sub-annotation, which appears as a sub-annotation of your main annotation. In order to create an IpctIimAnn sub-annotation, perform the following operations:

3.2 Editing Attribute Values

You can edit the value that appears for each attribute by performing the following operations:

Double-click the text in the right-hand column of the attribute.

A solid outline will appear around the table cell and an I-beam cursor will appear.

Edit the text.

Note:

interMedia Annotator cannot change the attribute values in the media itself; it can change only the attribute values in the extracted annotation. If you parse the media file again, your annotation will be overwritten and any attributes that you have edited will revert to their original values.

You can save your changes to the annotation. See Section 3.6 for more information.

3.3 Adding and Deleting Attributes to the Annotation

interMedia Annotator defines a given number of attributes (see Appendix C for a complete list of attributes). However, not all media sources will provide values for every attribute. You can use interMedia Annotator to add a value to your annotation for any attribute that does not have a value.

interMedia Annotator cannot write any new attribute values back to the media sources. The current annotation will contain the value, but any annotations created later by interMedia Annotator will not contain the new value.

To add a value for an attribute that has not been automatically set, perform the following operations:

From the Annotation menu, select Add Attribute.

The Add Attribute submenu appears (Figure 3-4), listing the attributes that have no values.

Figure 3-5 Please Confirm Window for Deleting Attributes

3.4 Adding and Deleting an Annotation

An annotation will usually contain one or more sub-annotations, which contain the metadata associated with a portion of the media source, such as a text track or an audio track. In addition to these populated sub-annotations, you can create your own sub-annotations by adding an empty annotation and then populating it with your own values.

To create an empty annotation, perform the following operations:

In the Annotations
pane, select the annotation under which you will add a sub-annotation.

Figure 3-6
Add Annotation Submenu

You can populate an empty annotation with attribute values in the same way you would add attribute values to a populated annotation. See Section 3.3 for more information.

You can delete annotations and sub-annotations. You can delete sub-annotations that you have created and sub-annotations that were created automatically in the parsing process. To delete an annotation, perform the following operations:

If you want to specify the time interval to pass between frame extractions, then enter true in the Extraction by Time Interval field and enter the interval (in seconds) in the Extraction Parameter field.

If you want to specify the number of frames to be extracted, then enter false in the Extraction by Time Interval field and enter the number of frames to be extracted in the Extraction Parameter field.

Click OK to confirm and save the changes.

Either select Extract Samples from the Annotation menu or click the Extract Samples button on the toolbar.

View the extracted video information by clicking the Samples tab when the video annotation is selected (Figure 3-9).

Figure 3-11 Make a Selection Window

The annotation and its sub-annotations appear in the Annotation Tree View.

3.8 Playing Media Sources or Viewing Extracted Samples

You can use interMedia Annotator to play your media source and any text or video sample that you have extracted.

Before playing a media source or sample, check the Mime-Types tab of the Preferences window to ensure that each MIME type is paired with the correct path to the appropriate helper application. See Section 2.2.5 for more information.

3.8.1 Media Source

Play a media source or an extracted sample by performing the following operations:

Select the annotation at the root of the Annotation Tree View.

Either click the Play Source button on the Annotation toolbar or select Play Source from the Annotation menu.

The appropriate media player opens and plays the media source.

3.8.2 Media Sample

Play an extracted media sample by performing the following operations:

Select the sub-annotation associated with the sample you want to play.

Either click the Play Source button on the Annotation toolbar or select Play Source from the Annotation menu.

The appropriate media player opens and plays the media source.

3.8.3 Text Sample

You can view a text sample without opening a separate viewer.

After extracting the text sample, click the Samples tab in the right-hand window pane. The text sample appears, along with a time line indicating roughly where each piece of text appears in the video or song.